Christopher Done wrote:

On 28 March 2010 22:00, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic mailto:ivan.miljenovic@gmail.com> wrote:

^^ This. It's too "boring" and depressing with all that grayscale. Why not use the coloured version of the logo ( http://haskell.org/sitewiki/images/a/a8/Haskell-logo-60.png ) and base the colour scheme off that?

I tried to do that but I found it difficult to make it look nice (and being honest I don't like those colours). I agree though, and defer to someone with more design talent!

There was a big competition for the logo, with this blind Condorcet voting and everything, and this is the shape that was picked. But it kind of ran out of steam before colours were decided upon. So I just copied the colours from the Haskell Platform logo... -- Ashley Yakeley

Christopher Done wrote:

On 28 March 2010 23:32, Ashley Yakeley wrote:

...

There was a big competition for the logo, with this blind Condorcet voting and everything, and this is the shape that was picked. But it kind of ran out of steam before colours were decided upon. So I just copied the colours from the Haskell Platform logo...

Sure. Maybe the colours are great, I don't know. But I can't get them to work very well, personally.

No, you're right, they're ugly colours IMO.

On 28 March 2010 23:25, Ashley Yakeley wrote:

...

Is the front page a wiki page?

By the looks of it, yes. If you go to 'Edit this page', you can see that it's made out of wikimedia templates. But that's just a guess.

I meant, in the redesign, is the intent to make the front page a wiki page, or a special static page? -- Ashley Yakeley

On 29 March 2010 00:08, Don Stewart wrote:

...

...

On 28 March 2010 23:25, Ashley Yakeley wrote:

...

Is the front page a wiki page?

By the looks of it, yes. If you go to 'Edit this page', you can see that it's made out of wikimedia templates. But that's just a guess.

I meant, in the redesign, is the intent to make the front page a wiki page, or a special static page?

I think the goal is an attractive non-wiki page with live content.

Right -- ideally the index page would be written separately from the Wiki but maybe use its libraries or at least in some way access the wiki database so that the index page can be manipulated through the wiki. Each section is kind of modular anyway. I'm trying out the 1.5 version I got from the mediawiki svn now. A copy of the database sans users would be nice. How big is it? I can construct my own example db but it's nice to work with the real thing.

On 29 March 2010 02:37, Jeff Wheeler wrote:

- The "Register | Login" button is awkward; it looks like it's centered with the descenders included, so it's a bit too high. Also, a pipe as a separator is strange. (This same style is used a few other places, too.)

Yeah, I'm not sure what to do with that. Maybe it could go just above the search?

- "The Haskell Programming Language" is a bit long. Perhaps make "The"/"Programming Language" be a lot lighter, so that Haskell really stands out.

Maybe it could be Haskell: /The Programming Language/ where /foo/ is in grey.

- I doubt we'll end up using that font for the headers (unless somebody is ponying up for a license and wants to use Typekit or so), but the 't' as in "Welcome _t_o" is very strange.

This font is licensed for use as a @font-face font: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Colaborate but we could use Georgia or something normal.

- Under "Events," I'd move "More" to be in line with the prev/next buttons.

True, that makes it consistent.

- Under "Latest Packages," I think different formatting could make this read more easily. At the very least, the package name and description should be a different color or weight. I'd move the description onto the same line (wrapping if necessary), but a lighter weight and a lighter gray (same color as the "Latest Event"?).

Yeah, I didn't want to go through every other package and colourize them in Inkscape. The package names should really be links so should be blue or something anyway, I think.

Just some ideas to think about.

I've attached the original Inkscape SVG, if you want to make some tweaks and send it back to me. I'm all setup to do the Wikimedia theme on my local machine, but fixing any warts before I do would be good. Cheers!

Christopher Done wrote:

On 28 March 2010 22:54, Don Stewart wrote:

...

This looks great!

What are the implementation details of having this go live?

* Ashley: would you be able to e.g. install an index.html like this, and hang the wiki under it? * How do we allow editing (by trusted users?)

I've emailed Ashley about sorting this out. I'll stick to the way it's currently done, wikimedia template for the home page. I'll just make the index page a special case somehow or make a new index file to pull the necessary bits from the wiki database. Let's go, Ashley!

Is the front page a wiki page? -- Ashley

On 29 March 2010 11:19, Simon Marlow wrote:

Is the footer necessary?  I dislike sites that have too many ways to navigate, and the footer looks superfluous.  The footer will probably be off the bottom of the window in any case, which reduces its usefulness as a navigation tool.

Footer navigations are a way to provide a bit of a sitemap without cluttering the top nav, good for SEO, and to provide the user with an overview of the hierarchical structure of the site on every page. According to the W3C, headings are easily navigable with a screenreader; as someone using assistive technologies I'd get something like: Welcome to Haskell.org Events Learning Headlines Latest Packages Quick Links Download Community Wiki Reports We can get rid of it but I think it's a useful thing.

If we want a tree of links for navigation, maybe the tabs at the top could be drop-down menus, or there could be a menu sidebar.

A side bar on sub pages sounds good.

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 16:24, Simon Marlow wrote:

On 29/03/2010 13:20, Christopher Done wrote:

...

On 29 March 2010 11:19, Simon Marlow wrote:

...

Is the footer necessary? I dislike sites that have too many ways to navigate, and the footer looks superfluous. The footer will probably be off the bottom of the window in any case, which reduces its usefulness as a navigation tool.

Footer navigations are a way to provide a bit of a sitemap without cluttering the top nav, good for SEO, and to provide the user with an overview of the hierarchical structure of the site on every page.

IMHO, these aren't compelling reasons. Note that already on your page there is an inconsistency between the tabs at the top and the headings at the bottom: I don't know where to look to find the content I want. Put the navigation in one place.

A sitemap: sitemaps are for robots. If you're worried about cluttering up the page, use drop-down menus.

SEO: we shouldn't compromise the usability or appearance of the site for SEO. If we do it right, SEO takes care of itself - and it's not like we care that much about SEO here, we're not competing with other sites to sell you Haskell.

I like something like this footer (though I don't think this is a great one: page-specific wiki actions doesn't belong, and I don't get the "Reports" column). It clearly doesn't serve as main navigation. For me, it's the "where do I go next" collection of links for when I've read the page. I think it can improve usability, not hurt it. As for SEO, I don't think the concern should be "do we show up high in the ranks?" but rather "does a query in a search engine take you to the most appropriate page?" I've long been frustrated by Google not being able to find good answers to my Haskell-related questions. If there's anything we can do to improve this issue by changing the page layout and structure of haskell.org, then I'm all for it. This in itself is a matter of usability. Regards, Sean

On 29 March 2010 21:51, Sebastiaan Visser wrote:

Nice work, definitely beats the current version!

A few remarks:  - Please throw in a bit more color somehow. Like said before, this shade of gray is a bit depressive.  - The "more" links are far to prominent. These links are not that important and form a very distractive part of the design. Maybe you can right-align them and make them less button-like.  - I would recommend to use a bit more conservative font for the headers and the headlines. Why not stick with Helvetica, Gill Sans or Myriad Pro?  - Don't use a bold font-face in running text.  - Align the bottom of the tabs headers with the content frame?  - Maybe you can make the right column less wide, making is more easy to focus on the main content?

These remarks might help to make the overall appearance a bit less heavy. Your design is quite lean and quiet, which is good, but some of the details make it a bit messy.

Useful tips, easy to change, thanks. I agree with all the points. I will update the concept pic in the morning. I'm already building the wikimedia skin now. I feel it's a good idea to get something real built that talks to the real database and can be clicked and browsed. Otherwise it will remain just an idea for a long time going through tweaks and watershedding. Regarding other colours, please help me. Here is the SVG of the site: http://chrisdone.com/tmp/haskell.svg If you can suggest one extra contrasting but complementing colour, that would be great.

On 31 March 2010 12:01, Johan Tibell wrote:

- There are several news streams going on at once. Perhaps "Headlines" and "Events" could be merged into one stream. After watching the Hackage RSS feed every day I don't know if it's interesting enough to put on a front page. Perhaps in a side bar which brings me to my next suggestions.

- Multi column pages are tricky to scan! It works well in news papers since the page height is limited but for web pages I really prefer one main column. Perhaps the second column code be made more narrow? Perhaps the footer content could be promoted into this second column and have it be a more conventional right (or left) hand nav?

That's true, it's a nice idea but in practice it's hard to know where to focus. I've gone with a left nav. I've built up the HTML which is cross-browser (ie6/7/8/opera/firefox/safari/chrome compat), still need to add some bits but I can tomorrow import it into a wikimedia skin. It's kind of easy to re-shuffle now that I've built it. http://82.33.137.16/haskell-website/ Feedback would be appreciated. One has to think, what do I really want to see on the home page? Personally, I want to see latest events and news, that's what I look for on the current page. I'd also like to stick The Big Download Button on there and a small embedded TryHaskell, maybe with random runnable code samples. Similar to the code sample on http://ruby-lang.org/ but something you can actually try in the browser. And yes, by the way, I'm taking inspiration from Ruby's site, Python's site and Ubuntu's wiki page, and I'd forgotten about Scala so I'm looking at their site for ideas, too.

- The quick links seem a bit random where they now appear. :)

Ha, yes! I popped them on last minute. I'm not entirely sure if there is a standard place for social networking icons to go. I'll have to see about that. There are lots of places the icons could go quite neatly. I was also thinking, I am told by my designer friends, that long pages are coming back, so I think we could afford another couple sections on there. Plus, I can optimise the page's download time by gzipping the HTML and caching the gzip binary result, outputting that, and refreshing that cache when the HomePage page is changed (actually Wikimedia probably already supports caching somewhat, though it is an old version, I'll have to see). Cheers!

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 12:40 AM, Christopher Done wrote:

That's true, it's a nice idea but in practice it's hard to know where to focus. I've gone with a left nav. I've built up the HTML which is cross-browser (ie6/7/8/opera/firefox/safari/chrome compat), still need to add some bits but I can tomorrow import it into a wikimedia skin. It's kind of easy to re-shuffle now that I've built it.

http://82.33.137.16/haskell-website/

Feedback would be appreciated.

There isn't a lot of visual separation between the nav bar and the main content. I think a border or background colour change might be nice. Also, when I let my firefox window fill the screen there's whitespace on the left and right, when I share my screen with another window the site doesn't fit horizontally - it doesn't adjust well to changing window widths. Also, in the nav bar it should be clearer when an item is linewrapping and when it is next in the list - on the left it looks like we have * The Haskell Platform * Glasgow Haskell * Compiler * ... so, bullet points or adjusted vertical spacing might help there. Also still quite grey. But I do like the focus on current events - the first impression you get visiting that page is that Haskell is alive and well, and people are using and developing it right now. The pictures of Real People smiling and huddling together really do help the friendly image we've managed to acquire (and should guard with utmost vigil, in my opinion). I think that the About and Learning sections of the original website are good section titles, and would work well on the navbar. The easiest thing to do on visiting the website is read about why Haskell is so great, and where to find out how to use it.

How about something more colourful? http://i.imgur.com/7jCPq.png The "Get Haskell" box should of course be a shiny button. A shadow separating the content box from the background would probably also be a good idea. But the main point is: less dull colours, and the important links should go at the top. On 2 April 2010 04:37, Ben Millwood wrote:

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 4:36 AM, Ben Millwood wrote:

...

The easiest thing to do on visiting the website is read about why Haskell is so great, and where to find out how to use it.

Uhm, I meant the easiest thing *should be* reading about...

Sorry about that. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

On 6 April 2010 13:24, Simon Michael wrote:

On 4/2/10 5:28 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

...

How about something more colourful?

http://i.imgur.com/7jCPq.png

No-one replied to this, but I like it. You sacrificed some information density for a simple, engaging, low-stress page (which can still rotate in new content frequently).

Hmmm, I must have missed this one. However, I find it being _too_ bereft of content. Maybe still have a sub-menu of "important" links/info (e.g. events) rather than force users to dig for them. -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

Maybe a bit off-topic, but as Johan mentioned the Cassandra web site... Are there any Haskellers out there using Cassandra with Haskell? Thanks, Martin

-----Original Message----- From: haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Johan Tibell Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 11:36 AM To: Simon Michael Cc: haskell-cafe@haskell.org Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell.org re-design

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 5:24 AM, Simon Michael wrote:

...

On 4/2/10 5:28 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

...

How about something more colourful?

http://i.imgur.com/7jCPq.png

I really like the simplicity of the Cassandra page:

http://cassandra.apache.org/ _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 11:47, Johan Tibell wrote:

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Dr. Martin Grabmüller wrote:

...

Maybe a bit off-topic, but as Johan mentioned the Cassandra web site...

Are there any Haskellers out there using Cassandra with Haskell?

Not yet but I plan to write a binding for it if I ever get time. :)

Apparently, somebody used it long enough to write this: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/cassandra-thrift Sean

I'm definitely not a design/color person, but has anyone considered using kuler.adobe.com as a source of "nice" color schemes, since we seem to have an issue coming up with attractive combinations? On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

Well, they make the wannabe-designer mistake of using justified text in HTML, even worse, for columns just 3 words wide.

The overall layout, is pretty nice though. It's essentially the standard Web 2.0 layout (compare http://basecamphq.com/, http://www.blinksale.com/, http://www.analysis-one.com/, etc.). The key design elements are (IMO):

- Put the important stuff at the top and separate it visually from the "other stuff". The important things are: (1) the quick summary of Haskell, (2) the "Get Haskell" button, (3) link to "Learn Haskell" / "Try Haskell"

- We may have a second row/column of secondary important stuff, like community, project hosting, more implementations, the top learning materials, etc. links to Haskell users

- News, Events, etc. can go further down

I'm not particularly attached to any particulars of my suggested design. I just thought I'll try to encourage to move away much further from the current wiki-like and somewhat dull design.

On 6 April 2010 10:36, Johan Tibell wrote:

...

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 5:24 AM, Simon Michael wrote:

...

On 4/2/10 5:28 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

...

How about something more colourful?

http://i.imgur.com/7jCPq.png

I really like the simplicity of the Cassandra page:

http://cassandra.apache.org/ _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

There's colourlovers.com as well On Apr 6, 2010, at 12:41 PM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

Well, I used http://www.colorschemedesigner.com/

On 6 April 2010 16:20, Daniel Peebles wrote:

...

I'm definitely not a design/color person, but has anyone considered using kuler.adobe.com as a source of "nice" color schemes, since we seem to have an issue coming up with attractive combinations?

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Thomas Schilling

...

wrote:

...

Well, they make the wannabe-designer mistake of using justified text in HTML, even worse, for columns just 3 words wide.

The overall layout, is pretty nice though. It's essentially the standard Web 2.0 layout (compare http://basecamphq.com/, http://www.blinksale.com/, http://www.analysis-one.com/, etc.). The key design elements are (IMO):

- Put the important stuff at the top and separate it visually from the "other stuff". The important things are: (1) the quick summary of Haskell, (2) the "Get Haskell" button, (3) link to "Learn Haskell" / "Try Haskell"

- We may have a second row/column of secondary important stuff, like community, project hosting, more implementations, the top learning materials, etc. links to Haskell users

- News, Events, etc. can go further down

I'm not particularly attached to any particulars of my suggested design. I just thought I'll try to encourage to move away much further from the current wiki-like and somewhat dull design.

On 6 April 2010 10:36, Johan Tibell wrote:

...

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 5:24 AM, Simon Michael wrote:

...

On 4/2/10 5:28 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

...

How about something more colourful?

http://i.imgur.com/7jCPq.png

I really like the simplicity of the Cassandra page:

http://cassandra.apache.org/ _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

This is a very nice design. However shouldn't other pages e.g. the wiki template be redesigning to match as well? If this is not going to happen, then I would almost prefer sticking to the current design for consistency's sake. On 6 April 2010 20:11, Thomas Schilling wrote:

Another attempt:  http://i.imgur.com/ENvl7.png

On 6 April 2010 10:36, Johan Tibell wrote:

...

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 5:24 AM, Simon Michael wrote:

...

On 4/2/10 5:28 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

...

How about something more colourful?

http://i.imgur.com/7jCPq.png

I really like the simplicity of the Cassandra page:

http://cassandra.apache.org/ _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- Push the envelope.  Watch it bend. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Thomas Schilling wrote:

Here's a matching Wiki style: http://i.imgur.com/XkuzH.png

I like your designs (I liked the blue and orange version, but all the colour schemes seem fine). For the wiki design, it would be good to re-think and cull those links at the top of the page. For example, I don't think that "random page" needs to be in the top bar. With several other links it's not clear to me what they do. Perhaps it's just me, but "wiki community" and "special pages" doesn't suggest what they do or why I would want to click them, and "related changes" also puzzles me as to what it might be. The "recent changes" and "page history" links seem redundant. The Haskell wiki has some useful content but the pages are cluttered with these links. Simply removing a few of these links (while we're redesigning the site anyway) would enhance the pages' usability. Thanks, Neil.

Thomas Schilling writes:

Another attempt: http://i.imgur.com/ENvl7.png

I like the layout, but hate the colour scheme. -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

On 7 April 2010 08:40, Thomas Schilling wrote:

On 6 April 2010 22:39, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:

...

I like the layout, but hate the colour scheme.

Wow, "hate" is a very strong word.

OK, I dislike the colour scheme. Happy now? ;-) -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

On 7 April 2010 10:02, Thomas Schilling wrote:

On 7 April 2010 00:57, Ivan Miljenovic wrote:

...

OK, I dislike the colour scheme.  Happy now? ;-)

That's still not constructive.  I.e, is it the black, the gray, the orange?

OK, it's the black; it seems a tad too strong for me (the fact that you have a black theme for your browser probably doesn't help).

Using more intense colours for the bar at the top becomes distracting very quickly.

How about a more neutral, paler colour?

Anyway, here's something with a bit more colour:  http://i.imgur.com/LpQmH.png

Apart from the black up the top still, I think this is nicer. However, maybe the links in the description text up the top are a bit too obvious... -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

Ok, based on both your and Ivan's comments I modified a bit more. http://i.imgur.com/cumLj.png Making the top columns and the lower columns the same width looks bad, but I agree that the large margin between the blurb and the Documentation headline was too large. After I changed that, however, the Documentation section and the News sections did not line up anymore which looked even worse when the news section had a different background colour. So instead the background colour is used for the quicklinks. Removing any use of a background colour would makes things too boring, though. I also swapped the heading colour and the title bar colour. So headings are now a very dark blue. The italic things in the blurb are actually not links (though they could be). Without any styling the blurb would look too boring, so I'm using the same blue that the title bar uses. On 7 April 2010 01:25, Gregory Crosswhite wrote:

I concur that the latest version with the softer colors looks a lot nicer, and I approve of the overall design.  I think that you should go back to using a change in the foreground color rather than the background color for the links in the main description, since at the moment it looks ugly.  I also think that it would look better if you could align the two columns in the top (i.e., the description text and the major links above the "News and Events" section) so that they align better with the two columns below;  you could probably also have the description text creep into the left margin so that it isn't exactly centered over the left column below, if that would look better.

Cheers, Greg

On Apr 6, 2010, at 5:16 PM, Ivan Miljenovic wrote:

...

On 7 April 2010 10:02, Thomas Schilling wrote:

...

On 7 April 2010 00:57, Ivan Miljenovic wrote:

...

OK, I dislike the colour scheme.  Happy now? ;-)

That's still not constructive.  I.e, is it the black, the gray, the orange?

OK, it's the black; it seems a tad too strong for me (the fact that you have a black theme for your browser probably doesn't help).

...

Using more intense colours for the bar at the top becomes distracting very quickly.

How about a more neutral, paler colour?

...

Anyway, here's something with a bit more colour:  http://i.imgur.com/LpQmH.png

Apart from the black up the top still, I think this is nicer. However, maybe the links in the description text up the top are a bit too obvious...

-- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Ok, last revision for tonight: http://i.imgur.com/d3ARq.png I fixed the link-box hanging over and I made the logo a bit bigger (60px, like currently on the Wiki) Ivan, yes it's more like Slate Grey, no idea what it's called. I have set a maximum width on purpose so that it doesn't degrade too badly on big screens. It was 50em (50 x font size), now it's 55em; For one-column text 40em would be better (too long lines are hard to read), but since it's a two-column layout, it's fine if it's wider. I've seen a website that fluidly switches between 2 and 3-column layout depending on how wide the window is (using CSS only) but I suppose that's hard to get to work portably (well, IE). On 7 April 2010 01:57, Gregory Crosswhite wrote:

Nice!  Is there any way you can enlarge the bottom section so that the box in the top-right doesn't look like it is hanging over the side (i.e., having whitespace directly below it and to the right of the main text)?  If anything, I think that it would look better for the bottom text to extend further right than the box at the top than vice versa.

Cheers, Greg

On Apr 6, 2010, at 5:49 PM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

...

Ok, based on both your and Ivan's comments I modified a bit more.

http://i.imgur.com/cumLj.png

Making the top columns and the lower columns the same width looks bad, but I agree that the large margin between the blurb and the Documentation headline was too large. After I changed that, however, the Documentation section and the News sections did not line up anymore which looked even worse when the news section had a different background colour.  So instead the background colour is used for the quicklinks.  Removing any use of a background colour would makes things too boring, though. I also swapped the heading colour and the title bar colour.  So headings are now a very dark blue.

The italic things in the blurb are actually not links (though they could be).  Without any styling the blurb would look too boring, so I'm using the same blue that the title bar uses.

On 7 April 2010 01:25, Gregory Crosswhite wrote:

...

I concur that the latest version with the softer colors looks a lot nicer, and I approve of the overall design.  I think that you should go back to using a change in the foreground color rather than the background color for the links in the main description, since at the moment it looks ugly.  I also think that it would look better if you could align the two columns in the top (i.e., the description text and the major links above the "News and Events" section) so that they align better with the two columns below;  you could probably also have the description text creep into the left margin so that it isn't exactly centered over the left column below, if that would look better.

Cheers, Greg

On Apr 6, 2010, at 5:16 PM, Ivan Miljenovic wrote:

...

On 7 April 2010 10:02, Thomas Schilling wrote:

...

On 7 April 2010 00:57, Ivan Miljenovic wrote:

...

OK, I dislike the colour scheme.  Happy now? ;-)

That's still not constructive.  I.e, is it the black, the gray, the orange?

OK, it's the black; it seems a tad too strong for me (the fact that you have a black theme for your browser probably doesn't help).

...

Using more intense colours for the bar at the top becomes distracting very quickly.

How about a more neutral, paler colour?

...

Anyway, here's something with a bit more colour:  http://i.imgur.com/LpQmH.png

Apart from the black up the top still, I think this is nicer. However, maybe the links in the description text up the top are a bit too obvious...

-- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- Push the envelope.  Watch it bend.

-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

On 7 April 2010 11:53, Ben Millwood wrote:

I've never really trusted this argument - it's not required that the browser window occupy the entire screen, so why not let the user choose how wide they want their text?

Agreed; I hate websites/blogs/etc. that only take up a fraction of the screen width (especially since I like to increase the font size to make it more readable, which results in only having a few words per line and quite often weird wrapping issues). At least it's in the centre though; this (which my brother worked on, which is why I know about it) abomination for some reason has everything on the left of the screen (some argument about how people might want to overlap their browser window with a text editor, etc.; I dont' see why they don't just shrink and move the browser window then): http://www.arachnoserver.org/ -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

On 7 Apr 2010, at 02:53, Ben Millwood wrote:

On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 2:22 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

...

I have set a maximum width on purpose so that it doesn't degrade too badly on big screens.

I've never really trusted this argument - it's not required that the browser window occupy the entire screen, so why not let the user choose how wide they want their text?

Unfortunately, because the majority operating system has such bad window management that all users do make their windows take up the entire screen. :( Bob

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:22 PM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

Ok, last revision for tonight:  http://i.imgur.com/d3ARq.png

I'm no web design guru, but this is definitely better than what we have now. Good job on it. Antoine

On 7 April 2010 10:49, Thomas Schilling wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/cumLj.png

I wonder... is there any reason why the actual page content is so narrow compared to the title bar (to allow for small screens)?

[snip] So headings are now a very dark blue.

The italic things in the blurb are actually not links (though they could be).  Without any styling the blurb would look too boring, so I'm using the same blue that the title bar uses.

That's _blue_ ? :O I was thinking it looked more like Slate Gray or something... -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

While I think that (d) is a valid concern, it is also important not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If we agree that the proposed web site layout is sufficiently better than the current one and is "good enough" aesthetically, then I think we should go ahead and switch to the new layout and *then* start thinking about how we could make it *completely amazing* like the Ruby web site, because if we demand completely amazing for our *first* try then I fear that all that will happen is that nothing will change because the bar will have been set too high. Cheers, Greg On Apr 6, 2010, at 6:25 PM, Jason Dagit wrote:

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 5:49 PM, Thomas Schilling wrote: Ok, based on both your and Ivan's comments I modified a bit more.

http://i.imgur.com/cumLj.png

Making the top columns and the lower columns the same width looks bad, but I agree that the large margin between the blurb and the Documentation headline was too large. After I changed that, however, the Documentation section and the News sections did not line up anymore which looked even worse when the news section had a different background colour. So instead the background colour is used for the quicklinks. Removing any use of a background colour would makes things too boring, though. I also swapped the heading colour and the title bar colour. So headings are now a very dark blue.

The italic things in the blurb are actually not links (though they could be). Without any styling the blurb would look too boring, so I'm using the same blue that the title bar uses.

We were discussing it briefly around the office and some things I recall from that: a) There's only so much you can do with square boxes, flat colors, and a single font. b) http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ is probably one of the best looking programming language websites. c) the wiki bar at the top has got to go d) how do the designs look on mobile devices?

It looks like you've definitely tackled (c), so that's great. It seems like maybe we can draw on (b) to help address (a).

I wish I had more concrete suggestions. Keep up the good work!

Jason

Yup, I have to agree. The Ruby web site certainly is the best web site for a programming language that I've come across, but it's certainly not "amazing". I like the python documentation design, but their home page is a bit dull. Anyway, here's another variation, this time with more colour: http://i.imgur.com/Lj3xM.png The image is about 80k (while the website alone is < 10k) so I hope there won't be any bandwidth issues. Regarding the particular contents: (a) I won't post another version for every tiny wibble. You know, you can actually post text via email (yes, really!) so if anyone has improvements for how the sections should look like, post the suggested alternative contents on this list. (b) A little redundancy is no problem at all. I try to follow the inverted pyramid model: put all the important information at the top, and add more details below. If that leads to a small amount of duplication so be it. (c) As mentioned before, we don't want a perfect home page, we simply want a better one. Incremental improvements can be made later on. (d) Who actually *can* update the homepage? Ian, Ross, Malcolm, Simon M? (e) I don't have an iPhone, *Droid, or iPad, so I'd need some help testing on any of those. (f) The design is not fixed width, and most sizes are specified in terms of font size or percentages. I merely added a max-width restriction so that it still looks decent on maximised screens. I tried to remove it, but that just doesn't look good anymore. On 7 April 2010 14:19, Daniel Fischer wrote:

Am Mittwoch 07 April 2010 04:09:17 schrieb Gregory Crosswhite:

...

While I think that (d) is a valid concern, it is also important not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  If we agree that the proposed web site layout is sufficiently better than the current one and is "good enough" aesthetically, then I think we should go ahead and switch to the new layout and *then* start thinking about how we could make it

Good plan.

...

*completely amazing* like the Ruby web site,

www.ruby-lang.org ?

Sure, that looks pretty good, but "completely amazing"?

...

because if we demand completely amazing for our *first* try then I fear that all that will happen is that nothing will change because the bar will have been set too high.

Cheers, Greg

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Ooo, I really like this revision; it is a major improvement in your design! I particularly like the picture you chose for the top, and the new way that you have laid out all of the boxes and made the bottom right box a different shade so that it is easier to distinguish it as a different column. Also, I concur with your use of the "inverted pyramid model", even if it comes at the expense of a little redundancy. My only quibble is that I don't like the fact that the summary text at the top has a font background color, so that there are in essence several boxes around the text of different sizes and with space in between the lines. I recognize that the purpose of the font background was to help the text contrast with the picture behind it, but it would be nicer if there were a better solution, such as by putting a box around all of the text and then filling that with color (so there aren't boxes of different sizes containing the text and empty spaces between the lines), or by putting a translucent box around the text so that we can still see the background but it's faded a bit so that the text still shows up. Cheers, Greg On Apr 7, 2010, at 9:53 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

Yup, I have to agree. The Ruby web site certainly is the best web site for a programming language that I've come across, but it's certainly not "amazing". I like the python documentation design, but their home page is a bit dull. Anyway, here's another variation, this time with more colour:

http://i.imgur.com/Lj3xM.png

The image is about 80k (while the website alone is < 10k) so I hope there won't be any bandwidth issues. Regarding the particular contents:

(a) I won't post another version for every tiny wibble. You know, you can actually post text via email (yes, really!) so if anyone has improvements for how the sections should look like, post the suggested alternative contents on this list.

(b) A little redundancy is no problem at all. I try to follow the inverted pyramid model: put all the important information at the top, and add more details below. If that leads to a small amount of duplication so be it.

(c) As mentioned before, we don't want a perfect home page, we simply want a better one. Incremental improvements can be made later on.

(d) Who actually *can* update the homepage? Ian, Ross, Malcolm, Simon M?

(e) I don't have an iPhone, *Droid, or iPad, so I'd need some help testing on any of those.

(f) The design is not fixed width, and most sizes are specified in terms of font size or percentages. I merely added a max-width restriction so that it still looks decent on maximised screens. I tried to remove it, but that just doesn't look good anymore.

On 7 April 2010 14:19, Daniel Fischer wrote:

...

Am Mittwoch 07 April 2010 04:09:17 schrieb Gregory Crosswhite:

...

While I think that (d) is a valid concern, it is also important not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If we agree that the proposed web site layout is sufficiently better than the current one and is "good enough" aesthetically, then I think we should go ahead and switch to the new layout and *then* start thinking about how we could make it

Good plan.

...

*completely amazing* like the Ruby web site,

www.ruby-lang.org ?

Sure, that looks pretty good, but "completely amazing"?

...

because if we demand completely amazing for our *first* try then I fear that all that will happen is that nothing will change because the bar will have been set too high.

Cheers, Greg

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Hot. On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/kFqP3.png Didn't know about CSS's "rgba" to describe transparency. Very useful.

On 7 April 2010 18:19, Gregory Crosswhite wrote:

...

Ooo, I really like this revision; it is a major improvement in your design! I particularly like the picture you chose for the top, and the new way that you have laid out all of the boxes and made the bottom right box a different shade so that it is easier to distinguish it as a different

column. Also, I concur with your use of the "inverted pyramid model", even if it comes at the expense of a little redundancy. > > My only quibble is that I don't like the fact that the summary text at the top has a font background color, so that there are in essence several boxes around the text of different sizes and with space in between the lines. I recognize that the purpose of the font background was to help the text contrast with the picture behind it, but it would be nicer if there were a better solution, such as by putting a box around all of the text and then filling that with color (so there aren't boxes of different sizes containing the text and empty spaces between the lines), or by putting a translucent box around the text so that we can still see the background but it's faded a bit so that the text still shows up. > > Cheers, > Greg > > On Apr 7, 2010, at 9:53 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote: > >> Yup, I have to agree. The Ruby web site certainly is the best web >> site for a programming language that I've come across, but it's >> certainly not "amazing". I like the python documentation design, but >> their home page is a bit dull. Anyway, here's another variation, this >> time with more colour: >> >> http://i.imgur.com/Lj3xM.png >> >> The image is about 80k (while the website alone is < 10k) so I hope >> there won't be any bandwidth issues. Regarding the particular >> contents: >> >> (a) I won't post another version for every tiny wibble. You know, >> you can actually post text via email (yes, really!) so if anyone has >> improvements for how the sections should look like, post the suggested >> alternative contents on this list. >> >> (b) A little redundancy is no problem at all. I try to follow the >> inverted pyramid model: put all the important information at the top, >> and add more details below. If that leads to a small amount of >> duplication so be it. >> >> (c) As mentioned before, we don't want a perfect home page, we >> simply want a better one. Incremental improvements can be made later >> on. >> >> (d) Who actually *can* update the homepage? Ian, Ross, Malcolm, Simon M? >> >> (e) I don't have an iPhone, *Droid, or iPad, so I'd need some help >> testing on any of those. >> >> (f) The design is not fixed width, and most sizes are specified in >> terms of font size or percentages. I merely added a max-width >> restriction so that it still looks decent on maximised screens. I >> tried to remove it, but that just doesn't look good anymore. >> >> On 7 April 2010 14:19, Daniel Fischer <daniel.is.fischer@web.de> wrote: >>> Am Mittwoch 07 April 2010 04:09:17 schrieb Gregory Crosswhite: >>>> While I think that (d) is a valid concern, it is also important not to >>>> let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If we agree that the proposed >>>> web site layout is sufficiently better than the current one and is "good >>>> enough" aesthetically, then I think we should go ahead and switch to the >>>> new layout and *then* start thinking about how we could make it >>> >>> Good plan. >>> >>>> *completely amazing* like the Ruby web site, >>> >>> www.ruby-lang.org ? >>> >>> Sure, that looks pretty good, but "completely amazing"? >>> >>>> because if we demand >>>> completely amazing for our *first* try then I fear that all that will >>>> happen is that nothing will change because the bar will have been set >>>> too high. >>>> >>>> Cheers, >>>> Greg >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Haskell-Cafe mailing list >>> Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org >>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> Push the envelope. Watch it bend. >> _______________________________________________ >> Haskell-Cafe mailing list >> Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org >> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe > >

-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Thomas Schilling writes:

http://i.imgur.com/kFqP3.png Didn't know about CSS's "rgba" to describe transparency. Very useful.

It's a vely nice!! (in a Borat voice)

...

...

 (e) I don't have an iPhone, *Droid, or iPad, so I'd need some help testing on any of those.

I have a Symbian phone, so I can probably help you out there. -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

On 4/7/10 9:53 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

Yup, I have to agree. The Ruby web site certainly is the best web site for a programming language that I've come across, but it's certainly not "amazing". I like the python documentation design, but their home page is a bit dull. Anyway, here's another variation, this time with more colour:

http://i.imgur.com/Lj3xM.png

This is not as simple as your first which I responded to, but it's rather nice! Quibbles, I would try to: - make the brown image full width, like the page header - re-establish the clear top and bottom division - lose or deemphasize as much as possible the blue background of the blurb text - I know why it's there but it's way ugly at present - lose the italics in the blurb text, or make it all italic - bring back the serif font ?